Everyone is Switching to Mac!

August 27, 2009

We have done a bad job explaining 1Password 2, 1Password 3, and Snow Leopard and inadvertantly created a lot of confusion. I'm sorry about that and hope that this post will clear things up.

1Password 2 on Snow Leopard

1Password 2 works fine on Snow Leopard "out of the box". The main application and all browsers work fine, except Safari. Safari is special because starting in Snow Leopard it runs in 64-bit mode which is very different than Leopard or Tiger.

While 1Password 2 cannot run in 64-bit Safari, it is possible to make it work in 32-bit mode. We just published version 2.9.29 to make it easier so all you need to do is highlight Safari in Finder, ctrl-click on it and select Get Info, and enable the "Open in 32-bit mode" checkbox under the General section.

Once 32-bit mode is enabled, restart Safari and the 1P icon should appear in your toolbar. If it doesn't, please see this troubleshooting guide for help.

To recap, you do not have to modify anything to get 1Password 2 working on Snow Leopard if you decide to use a browser other than Safari. If you want to use Safari, you need to configure it to run in 32-bit mode.

If 1Password 2 gives you an error that it cannot launch on Snow Leopard, you need to update to the latest version of 1Password 2. Simply download the latest version from our website and be sure to drag your existing copy to the Trash before copying over the new version.

The upcoming 1Password 3 is able to run in Safari even in 64-bit mode, and you can participate in the beta if you like. Read on for details.

1Password 3 Beta

1Password 3 is the largest upgrade in Agile's history. It contains many new features and has been in development for over a year.

We were hoping to finish 1Password 3 before Snow Leopard was released so everyone could enjoy the 64-bit Safari goodness, but we didn't make it. To compensate, we decided to open up the beta testing to all Snow Leopard users.

1Password 3 has been in private beta testing for a long time now and has proven to be quite stable. However, if testing software and reporting issues is not your idea of fun, we recommend that you wait for the final 1Password 3 release later this year. In the meantime, you can continue to use 1Password 2.

If you want to join the 1Password 3 Early Access team, all you need to do is start 1Password 2 on your Snow Leopard installation. When you do, you will get this prompt:

Simply click Get 1Password 3 and you will be taken to the setup instructions. If you do not see this prompt, update to the latest version of 1Password 2 by following the instructions in the 1Password 2 on Snow Leopard section.

1Password 3 is shaping up quite nicely, so we wanted to give you a better idea of all the awesome features we've been working on for the past year. After all, 1Password 2 came out nearly three years ago, so customers are excited and want to know what they're getting when purchasing an upgrade license—the first paid version upgrade we've ever had.

This post is going to highlight some of the most interesting and broadly appealing ingredients of 1Password 3, but there's plenty more where these came from. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll have more posts here that go in-depth on some of these features and reveal other notable improvements. But for now, let's get started with the big features of 1Password 3.

1PasswordAnywhere

Users have been asking for a way to access their data on other computers running Windows and Linux, and the new 1PasswordAnywhere feature in 1Password 3 is designed specifically for that.

1Password makes it incredibly easy to use a unique strong password for every website. This makes things much more secure, but made it difficult to login to websites while away from your Mac. With 1PasswordAnywhere, you can securely access your passwords from, well, anywhere.

1PasswordAnywhere does not store your information on our servers. You can store your 1Password data file where ever you want, and use the embedded web application to decrypt and view your data.

1PasswordAnywhere is also Dropbox-friendly. If you sync your Agile Keychain on Dropbox then you can also access your passwords using its web interface. You will need to know both Dropbox username/password and the Master Password of the Agile Keychain.

Edit 1Password items in your browser

Sometimes you need to change a Login or delete an old Credit Card that you are no longer using. Right now, you have to stop what you're doing, get out of your browser, launch 1Password 2, and search for the item you need to edit.

Not anymore.

1Password 3 stays out of your way even more now, allowing you to remain in your browser to edit or even delete Logins, Identities, and Credit Cards. If 1Password 3 is installed, you can simply find one of these items from our browser button, then hold the Shift key and click to open an editing interface right from your browser. Use the Option-Shift combination, and you can altogether delete the item without ever opening 1Password 3.

Note that this feature does not work with 1PasswordAnywhere—1Password 3 must be installed and using your Agile Keychain in order to edit items from within your browser.

New Software Licenses category

Many of us now have hundreds of Software Licenses. 1Password 2 stored them in the Wallet and it was difficult to organize them. 1Password 3 adds a brand new Software Licenses section to solve this problem, with some interesting twists.

Instead of showing a simple list of licenses, 1Password 3 will import their beautiful icons. This makes for a better organization experience and proudly displays your application licenses.

You can drag-and-drop application icons from the Applications folder into 1Password to quickly add new Software Licenses.

Completely new UI

More than just a pretty face or "how it looks," every 1Password window has been revisited to improve the overall experience and make it easier to add or find your information. For example: like the beautiful application icons we collect for Software Licenses, 1Password 3 will collect thumbnails for each Login, making it much easier to quickly identify a site from the list when you need it right away. You can even add photos from your iSight to an Identity to help it stand out.

We've removed buttons, streamlined 1Password 3's window, and added a new "Syncing" area to the left sidebar that displays the devices you synchronize with. All of this, and more, is part of our quest to make 1Password an extremely easy and beautiful application.

Customizable Login and Wallet items

Want to get rid of some fields from Login items? Perhaps you want to add extra information to your Wallet items that we didn't provide in the template. With 1Password 3, it's no problem. You can now add new custom fields to Wallet items and completely customize existing fields too.

Improved Wi-Fi Syncing

You can now see your synced devices in 1Password's sidebar, thanks to our completely redesigned UI. Click your device, and you'll get an iTunes-like area for selecting specific folders for syncing, allowing you to choose whether to bring only a specific portion of your items on-the-go.

1Password touch can sync items from the folders you choose, though it does not support folder organization. 1Password touch Pro will sync the folders along with their items. Eventually, it will also let you create folders on iPhone and sync them back to your Mac.

Tags

In addition to folders, tags give you another very flexible system for organizing items in 1Password 3. Tag a couple Logins, a Wallet item, and a few Secure Notes with "work," and you can click or search for that tag to view just the items you need while in the office.

Gestures

Apple brought multi-touch gestures like finger-swiping to make Mac OS X easier to use, so we added this convenience to 1Password 3. It works just like in Mail.app, use three-finger swipe gesture to navigate the items.

64-bit Snow Leopard support

One of the most significant changes in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is a virtually top-to-bottom architectural shift to 64-bit computing. While this basically means that many applications may see improved performance (especially at the high-end like large Photoshop files and video editing), there isn't much to see on the surface for end users. Still, such a large shift is no small feat, but 1Password 3 and its browser extensions are fully compatible.

August 26, 2009

Last weekend we discussed the ins and outs of what the release of Snow Leopard means for users of 1Password 2 and our forthcoming sequel, 1Password 3: The Revenge of the Awesome. However, we're still getting questions about 1Password 3 and whether users should upgrade to Snow Leopard, so I'm going to revisit the topic.

In a nut: 1Password 3, still in private beta testing, is the only version of 1Password that is currently being tested and supported to run on Snow Leopard. If you haven't gotten into the private beta yet, though, fret not, for we have good news, especially if you're itching to upgrade to Snow Leopard as soon as it arrives on Friday.

When you try to run 1Password 2 after upgrading to Snow Leopard, you will gain a free pass into the 1Password 3 beta. That's right: pass go, collect $200, do not go to jail. Except, we aren't giving you $200, and I don't think you could be jailed for running 1Password 2 on Snow Leopard... but you will see a prompt like the one below for downloading a beta trial version of 1Password 3:

These betas are fully functional and offered only to Snow Leopard users (for now) since they're the ones who need 1Password 3 the most. We ask that those opting into the beta to please participate in the beta process by submitting bug reports and letting us know if things go wrong. After all, that's what the "beta" thing is all about.

Now we don't want to force people to test 1Password 3, so as an alternative, we documented how to make 1Password 2 run on Snow Leopard. It is an unsupported configuration, but many users have reported success. When upgrading to Snow Leopard, you will need to decide if you want to use the unsupported 1Password 2, or help test 1Password 3.

Don't forget: 1Password 3 is our first paid upgrade ever, and we have a very wide-open window for giving free license upgrades to owners of 1Password 2. 1Password 3 is effectively a trial version, but testers can update during the beta process until it officially ships and a full or upgraded license for 1Password 3 will be required.

August 22, 2009

Apple has announced Snow Leopard's official release date as August 28, 2009. This means a few different things for users of 1Password 2, as well as the beta testers and future users of 1Password 3.

1Password 2

First, and most importantly: 1Password 2 generally seems to work on Snow Leopard, both as a stand-alone app and with most of its browser plugins (more on those in a minute). However: 1Password 2 will not be supported on Snow Leopard in any way. Please see Update: 1Password on Snow Leopard.

In order to use 1Password 2 on Snow Leopard, you will need to handicap Safari into running in 32-bit mode and do a little hacking. While 10.6 Snow Leopard looks a lot like its little 10.5 Leopard brother, the changes under the hood (like 64-bit mode) are quite extensive. Here are the steps to run 1Password 2 in Snow Leopard:

Set Safari to run in 32-bit mode by quitting Safari, right-clicking Safari.app in your Applications folder, and choosing "Get Info." In the inspector that appears, select "32-bit mode," then close the window.

Right-click Safari again and choose "Show Package Contents." Then browse to /Contents/Info.plist and open this file with a preferences editor. MacUpdate is a good resources for finding these kinds of apps.

Look for an entry in this preferences file called CFBundleVersion and copy its four- or five-digit value. We could just tell you this number, but it will change and you need to repeat these steps each time Safari is upgraded.

Set the Safari.MaxBundleVersion in this file to the number you copied in step 3, and save the file. Do not use any other number besides the one you get from Safari's Info.plist file. This is unsupported and, more importantly, untested (hence being unsupported; it's a vicious cycle).

1Password 2 should now work in Safari on Snow Leopard, but remember: we can't support this configuration. If you need help, there may be others in our forums running the same configuration.

1Password 3

When it is officially released (soon-ish-y), 1Password 3 will be fully compatible with and supported on both Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard. 1Password 3 will not support 10.4 Tiger.

The 1Password 3 beta is currently working on Snow Leopard; we have a lot of beta testers on Snow Leopard and we have been doing development exclusively on it for months now.

Fortunately, private beta testing of 1Password 3 is winding down, so we are slowly starting to open up testing to more people. Snow Leopard users need 1Password 3 the most, so users who start 1Password 2 on Snow Leopard will be asked if they would like to beta test 1Password 3. Beta testing for Leopard users will be available shortly.

To recap, 1Password 3 is still in beta so there may still be quirks or a few unpolished buttons, so please let us know if you run into problems. If testing and reporting issues is not your idea of fun, you should wait for the final 1Password 3 release. For those testing, be sure to report issues in the 1Password Early Access forum as everything is still under NDA.

June 26, 2009

Maybe you're a developer helping Apple put some final spit and polish on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the forthcoming major update that's due by September this year. Or maybe you're an ahem enthusiastic user who just has to peek at what Apple has behind the curtain. Either way, you are now frantically looking for a way to continue living in a pre-release Snow Leopard world without 1Password working with Safari.

That's right, while our developer ninjas typically slice through browser updates with startlingly silent speed, we tend to wait for Apple to publicly ship its major OS updates before springing into action. A lot can change during the beta period of an OS, and constantly keeping up with those changes can create a lot of busywork—work that takes us away from supporting our customers and making 1Password even more awesome.

However, as it turns out, 1Password 2.9.19 should work fairly well on Snow Leopard. Our plug-in for most browsers should also work, except for Safari. To get 1Password running in Safari on Snow Leopard, you can perform two simple steps from this post in our forums, courtesy of 1Password developer Chad Seldomridge. To quote:

Configure Safari to run in 32-bit mode (Use Get Info in Finder and enable the 32-bit mode under the General section).

Edit the 1Password.app/Contents/Resources/SupportedBrowsers.plist file and set the Safari.MaxBundleVersion value to 6532 (Update: value changed from 6531 to 6532 for latest Snow Leopard build 10A402a)

That should make 1Password happy in Safari on Snow Leopard, but remember: this is not an official statement of support. 1Password is still completely unsupported on Snow Leopard, so if you need help, swing on by the aforelinked thread to post feedback and ask questions.